I don't love all his paintings. Some look almost saccharine to me. But others, like the one here, have the kind of light/dark romanticism that I love. And the unabashed attempt to depict the presence of God through some kind of alchemy of light color and otherness, what's better than that? Like any great artist, what is perceived as his radicalness came about organically, in an attempt to find a way to express the inexpressible, not as a self-conscious construct.

But I'm supposed to be saying something more formalist than this, right? He made paintings that managed to maintain thrilling structure despite being nearly completely atmospheric. I think it's rare to find this kind of raw rapturous passion stopping short (usually) of sentimentality, remaining somehow disciplined.

That gets back to the 7th deadly sin of sloth that Ive been thinking about. "A refusal to enjoy the goodness of God and the world he created". I don't actually believe in God's creation and I think Turner had his doubts but he did paint what he saw and felt.

I would say that he showed the power of chaos in nature and how it manifests in human society.

I think it's rare to find this kind of raw rapturous passion stopping short (usually) of sentimentality, remaining somehow disciplined.

I should say rare in the modern age. Less rare when most all painting was religious. (Less rare in numbers, not proportion, as I assume that the majority of painters, those whose names we do not know, did not go beyond the sentimental.)

I wish I lived in nyc,I'd take my butt to the holiday inn with the 89 yr old bartender-find the cool while you can-right now,i got a choice of spoiled hiopsters/tourists-bar-an im going there-see how they like Turner

I'm an artist without an art history degree and much of my Turner education came from this visit. From this brief day of information, I think Turner would have been an art blogger with a web site promoting his art. I'm an art blogger and I think I know one when I see one. He embraced the technology at the time and was a canny business man. While other artists would wait until their painting was hung to put on the final varnish, Turner opted to do some actual painting on his, in other words a short free demo and then varnish causing more hype. Usually his paintings included some descriptive statement with a few lines of poetry and sometimes the poetry was written by him. Sounds like a blogger to me.

Turner's technique evokes an expansive dramatic landscape - what's great is that it's just paint, brush texture and not a lot of detail. Fairly impressive really and not at all pretentious. To me this work has apocalyptic overtones - the hands lifted up and the omen sun.

I think its hard to look at them and not think about power. Formless shapeless immense power. Somehow nature's power is acceptable and I guess some people think it's comforting to be submissive to it. Basis of religion and all. But the forms of power that we are dealing with currently? Even our collective heat, our collective carbon footprints, our collective greed. Stunning. Out of control.

But Duncan couldn't understand why people would say they were interested in her projects and then suddenly flake out. She wondered why her time was being wasted. Scientology, who has saved many an artist's career, offered to help but Duncan was too rebellious and high-strung to submit to a cult. With money troubles and the scientologists after them, Blake and Duncan decided to return to New York. But even back home, the golden couple didn't find peace. It was as if their time in Los Angeles had let a perennial sun upon their souls and they woke up from a champagne-laced dream covered with cancer. That summer, the golden couple took their own lives and only a small article in Vanity Fair proved anyone had ever heard of them - or even cared. But to Fawn, they were artists and friends who met a tragic end and she wondered if such a fate, both fame and suicide, would happen to her.

2. Pink & girlie with a sense of humor (kind of like Paris Hilton): Celebrity blog 'Pink Is The New Blog' and the super cute packaging on Stila cosmetics are styles dialed into our concept but we're open to your genius!

3. Clean almost corporate format like 'This Is Love & War' site to make it easier to read. Format will be story introduction, description of characters (pictured in anime), seasons 1-6 (20 episodes each season), and a section where readers can give reviews or ask the girls questions.

4. Run video on our website for our national film contest to shoot episodes from Season 1 coming up on YouTube.

5. Target audience are viewers of Gossip Girl, The Hills or E! Channel, people who love Sex & The City, Entourage or Californication, and all music + luxury brand advertisers.

If this sounds like your kind of project, we look forward to working with you!

First, props to painter, everyone who’s in the city should drop by to see “Admirer” at 31 Grand, 143 Ludlow, curated by our very own. That’s tomorrow July 10, 7-9pm

Second, I popped in for this show between the Louise Bourgeois at the Gugg and Bucky Fuller and Paul McCarthy at the Whit. For paintin’ Turner takes the cake. Admittedly some of his early stuff is sweet, a common affliction of academicians at the time (they had to please the socialites) and there’s more that a whiff of what we’d call kitsch now (like a tiny figure praying to a cross in a high Alpine ravine, or the misty silhouette of a miniature elephant in “Hannibal Crossing the Alps) but these were all affectations of the times, and made me laugh. His influence on the early Impressionists seems more potatoes and gravy than fruit salad in flavor. A couple of the large navel scenes were obvious commissioned pieces, and were more intent on showing the detail and mass of the British Fleet, that capturing the atmospheric and dynamic action of the sea. There was a great Tuner documentary on PBS about six months ago that is worth seeing. In the ark of his career he was the hottest artist in England at a fairly young age with his own gallery and work shop, but he eventually fell out of fashion and ended up alone, an eccentric shut in with stacks of moldering paintings in a decrepit hulk of a building, good stuff. Also I Ran into Philip Roth at the members preview.

Set in Paris, the story revolves around three friends—Serge, Marc and Yvan—who find their previously solid 15-year friendship on shaky ground when Serge buys an expensive painting. The canvas is white, with a few white lines...

Serge is proud of his 200,000 franc acquisition fully expecting the the approval of his friends.

cahs is real tight - Im going to sell "a bottle and some voyages" - a book of Claus oldenberg's stuff. I never look at it anyways. I think its worth 10 bucks - that will get me there and back and buy a slice and a beer to boot. Tres romantique, no? God I fucking love bohemian life.

I'm with the Iranians or who ever does their photoshop. Crutches are good when you are down. Try a thin glaze (or gradient layer set to overlay in photoshop) This can fix flaws in exposure time or tonal range no prob - like when you are shooting at night with a cell phone.

Glazes also unify the picture - so thats a huge crutch right there. Just say no to varnish! Let it Rot!Grow your own!

Speaking of scale, namely "economies of scale"

“The accumulated data from all investigations indicate that jalapeño peppers caused some illnesses but that they do not explain all illnesses,” the agency said in a statement. Tomatoes, however, remained under investigation along with serrano peppers and fresh cilantro.

Do you think its a governement plot to cover up the shortages? An experiment in marketing psychology? How much did McD's save by not serving tomatoes?

I love scale. Someone like Benjamin Edwards (who saltz likes) uses it - though I think more ironicly in a superflat and "conceptual" way - definitely not taking advantage of atmosspheric perspective - its more digital or "virtual" so no dust involved. No cat hairs or hog bristles either. Where's the humanity?

Will Goya stock go down - El Coloso of foods? What about the Jolly Green Giant? Am I whistling dixie?

Seems like there are a lot of vocano paintings with simular ash fall motif - sort of Jungian or maybe just in the air like the environment.

TYPHOEUS (or Typhon) was a monstrous immortal storm-giant who was defeated and imprisoned by Zeus in the pit of Tartaros. He was the source of devastating storm winds which issued forth from that dark nether realm.

"All four items cited today are common ingredients in some of the building blocks of Mexican cuisine, and the C.D.C. told consumers to stay away from fresh salsa, guacamole and pico de gallo if they wish to reduce the risk of infection.

laying back samples, cutting and driving adding and lacking, taking and, stealer, buyer, dealer, remade her, takers... givers on the edge, end of this, neverend of that, forrrrrr suuuuuurethe end starts here speedystretched out over yondermakes it's way back round that waymeanwhile...keep it wheel

laying back samples, cutting and driving adding and lacking, taking and, stealer, buyer, dealer, remade her, takers... givers on the edge, end of this, neverend of that, forrrrrr suuuuuurethe end starts here speedystretched out over yondermakes it's way back round that waymeanwhile...keep it wheel

laying back samples, cutting and driving adding and lacking, taking and, stealer, buyer, dealer, remade her, takers... givers on the edge, end of this, neverend of that, forrrrrr suuuuuurethe end starts here speedystretched out over yondermakes it's way back round that waymeanwhile...keep it wheel

laying back samples, cutting and driving adding and lacking, taking and, stealer, buyer, dealer, remade her, takers... givers on the edge, end of this, neverend of that, forrrrrr suuuuuurethe end starts here speedystretched out over yondermakes it's way back round that waymeanwhile...keep it wheel

laying back samples, cutting and driving adding and lacking, taking and, stealer, buyer, dealer, remade her, takers... givers on the edge, end of this, neverend of that, forrrrrr suuuuuurethe end starts here speedystretched out over yondermakes it's way back round that waymeanwhile...keep it wheel

Excessive use of high rising terminal. Statements have rising intonation, causing normal declarative language to appear to the listener as interrogative. Also known as "uptalking" or the "moronic interrogative."

1. A Million Miles Away - The Plimsouls 2. Johnny, Are You Queer? - Josie Cotton 3. Eyes Of A Stranger - Payolas 4. Angst In My Pants - Sparks 5. Who Can It Be Now? - Men At Work 6. Everywhere At Once - The Plimsouls 7. I La La La Love You - Pat Travers' Black Pearl 8. He Could Be The One - Josie Cotton 9. Love My Way - Psychedelic Furs 10. Jukebox (Don't Put Another Dime) - The Flirts 11. The Fanatic - Felony 12. She Talks In Stereo - Gary Myrick & The Figures 13. Oldest Story In The World - The Plimsouls 14. School Is In - Josie Cotton 15. I Melt With You - Modern English

Apophenia is the experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data. The term was coined in 1958 by Klaus Conrad, who defined it as the "unmotivated seeing of connections" accompanied by a "specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness".

The mobs of Downtown and ‘Burg hipsters were sweating profusely. Beer was flowing and conversations were lively. I could hardly elbow my way through the crowds to see the art. Finally got to meet some very interesting artists whose work I’ve been following for years. Kudos on “Admirer” painter!

I love how advertising is seamless nowadays. Kinda sorta Orwellian. Shouldn't the drugs be free?Shouldn't I be working in the industry?

I got their message, but I didn't reply.I got the application But I didn't apply.I can't fail if I don't even try.

How come the pie doesn't have slices? How many times is the knife gonna dice us?How can I drink without any ices?Get me a job that doesn't use 13 spices? Worked in a factory now I thought that was nicer -No skills no bother health care no crisis.

Got to apprentice yourself to a disasterGotta get wise like the old task mastergotta get a job for a human beingclass conscious alternatives denied the dreamLose all your friends as they ascend the beamLose my mind cuz I can;t be seenLost all my drive now I'm a pale riderFailure to thrive is like a diseaseNo one cares Im just a cool breezeBreak it down.

InBev SA announced its intent to try and purchase Anheuser-Busch on June 11. The Anheuser-Busch board initially voted against the merger, calling the initial $65 per share offer too low.

That prompted much squabbling between the companies over the past few weeks. InBev filed a motion seeking the removal of all 13 Anheuser-Busch board members; Anheuser-Busch filed suit calling the InBev effort an "illegal scheme" that threatened to defraud Anheuser-Busch shareholders. Among other things, the suit noted that InBev failed to disclose it operates a brewery in Cuba.

In other news, sources close to Absolutsaid that there is indeed a pill that canturn an average Joe into Kanye for 4 hours.That.... "This is is not just a viral marketingscheme as it may seem, but a product of many years of intense research".

Those same sources also disclosed that this is the very pill that they actually usedto create the initial Kanye West.

I love the story behind The Raft of the Medusa - glad I wasn't there, though I dare say I haven't done well in positions of authority, or even decision making or planning. I'm just not that person. Sorry. I hope its ok, I'm living in the moment, off the sweat of our soldiers in uniform, for one. That and migrant labor. I;m incompetent and also, I;m not that impressed with Turner's star status. WHat has he done for me lately?

I like the Raft of Medusa which is a great painting. The Turner, which is a small painting in comparison to Géricault's masterpiece, the Turner packs a lot of punch for a such a small painting. It was hanging in the MFA in Boston but they took it down for some reason.

I read that Géricault had severed limbs and heads in his studio to paint as studies.

I can admire Turner’s contribution to landscape – wild weather! – and the way he ties that right into a process of depiction, but I’m sick of the comparisons with Rothko. It’s a way for Rothko fans to approach Turner, I guess, maybe, and vice versa, but they’re in denial really.

The idea is that Turner’s preliminary studies and stages to work begin from a similar blur of colors – a Rothko-like abstraction. Turner then inflects these broad areas with more detail, gradually builds up a scene, perspective, and inevitably hazy atmosphere. Rothko meanwhile confines himself to modulations within a single color, their relation to others within the picture frame/shape.

Turner builds a picture, Rothko a color swatch. They don’t share the same ideals at all, much less experiences. Turner admits to phase; Rothko to pigment chemistry and various application. I don’t see the comparison as valid because I don’t see what this devotion to color establishes – what parameters it sets for pigment or application. I don’t see the priority for color, anymore than I see the eye’s inclinations detached from the rest of the brain’s.

Turner points to the world and often urgent issues – even if cautiously revealed – but what is the red of Rothko? Even when allowed vagueness to shape or proportion, inconstancy of instrument or pigment? The red of sunsets and rises, roses and rubies, all rolled into one? If all he can take from them is color then he’s leaving too much, rolling too far. And where will that leave him? What comprehensive digest of color instances does he hope to record on a given support with given pigments/application and surrounding colors? There is no isolating color in some absolute purity, no thrill of the chase really. Color has to be of something. Rothko’s reluctant divisions and contrasts are not a more basic or abstract world but a retreat from it.

Turner may have been in love with unpredictable weather, but at least he could see beyond the fog of a busy hand steered by dogma.

Yeah that's pretty stupid, comparing to Rothko. It would be just as easy to do a Malevitch-Rothko comparison.

Like people who see faces in everything. " Oooh I think I see a face" - which is a biological hard wired response anyways, I hear.

The historical references are interesting. Were any volcanoes blowing up when Rothko was painting? Lots of dust in the air?No, I don't think so, not really, no.

SO the quality of the light, you knwo, historicly, and geographicly was probably a bit different. that would be an interesting chart to graph - particulate in the air to palette choices of landscape painters. The Scream for example - influenced by the fiery apocalyptic sunsets of dust laden skies.

Why do people relate to Rothko as a landscape painter? Because abstraction is alienating? Because they just aren't capable of seeing a flat abstraction as a flat abstraction? Because the horrible truth of reality must be masked by the fiction of imagined space and time? I think the proper way to relate to paintings such as Turner and Rothko is as a surface on a plane, and nothing more.

In art school I was taught that those horizontals in Rothko automatically signal landscape - that we're hardwired to read them as horizons (hence horizontal).

I think it's more likely that the logic is that you can't imagine/abstract something that doesn't have a basis in reality. You can abstract from landscape but that's all it can ever be - there is no exclusive realm of the 'purely' abstract waiting for you to get sufficiently far from reality. You just drag along some newly reinforced element - like an horizon - as you go.

I think Rothko's choice of color combinations were supposed to neutralise the landscape projection, but again that just points to how flexible colors in sky or land or sea can be - depending on light and weather!

For many years I saw Rothko in books - so the landscape connection wasn;t aparent to me. I saw squares - but like the rabbit/man/moon thing I also saw a rabbit before I saw a man. But I saw "nothing" for a long time before that.

But when I stand in fron tof a rothko, well, then, I am standing on a plane and I see a horizon. Its like a turells installation - you sort of fall into it. I get the impression turner was supposed to be like that for people - though I think fdor many people it becomes dated wall paper - sort of like the stuff in a fifties kitchen - where for the person who pasted it up it was a great change, a step towards the future. Polishing the turd gets harder and harder - though the turd is a fine specimine. Reminds me of the poop smeared walls you get sometimes in bathrooms.

What about the big waterfall of Eliason? I think it's funny that OE's sending up the East River. (I always think of Kramer swimming in the East River on Seinfeld). Is OE a reformer, oxygenating the pollution? Will that work? Can Obama do something like that?

If you had Rothko and Turner in a room and they had to talk about their work I think one would find that there is nothing in Rothko that is found in a Turner other than they both use oil paint.

Turner was a cockney East End Londoner. He was a tough hard scrabble man who was extremely ambitious and he had his own gallery. Very modern in a lot of ways they way he would sometimes come in to finish a painting on the day of an opening at the Royal Academy is all about spectacle and showmanship.

cap clearly you do not (want to) understand abstraction, think more emotional/gastronomic/musical, but good points about turner no less. there is nothing between the two of them, save for the hardwired facts of perception, but if that's the case the comparative list would stretch down to the toes of it. the best thing about turner was that he wandered around the countryside and said his best asset, or secret, was "hard work". The mythical proletariat always imparts a sense of duty/pain=beauty. Hard work impresses everyone, that shit is hardwired too. So what is it, faces, horizons and hardwork. Secret formula revealed!

"this mighty work of art is more a demonstration of the dark vision of Romanticism than an allusion to a specific contemporary event. As the promise of liberty represented by the French Revolution faded and the malign effects of the parallel Industrial Revolution became manifest, a bleak note of fatalism crept into the art and writings of the Romantic Generation."

We’re seeking the following individuals:• PAIN MANAGEMENT SPECIALIST, such as a PHYSICAL THERAPIST or a NURSEo You have experience with a range of pain sufferers, e.g. sports medicine and eldercareo You manage others’ pain medications, or help them manage their own

• HOUSEHOLD CAREGIVER who CARES for multiple generationso You manage pain relievers and other medications for one or more children AND one or more elderly people

• PERSON PREPARED FOR EVERYTHING, INCLUDING PAIN, such as a MOUNTAINEER, LONG-DISTANCE HIKER, or MILITARY PERSONNELo You have to be ready for anything but have limited spaceo You experience pain-related issues and prepare for those

• A HYPOCHONDRIAC or SOMEONE OBSESSED WITH HEALTH-ORIENTED PREVENTIONo You are aware that you’re a hypochondriac – you think about many aspects of your health constantly and carry at least 5 items with you at all times to prevent or address those concerns

• SOMEONE WHO TAKES PILLS 4 OR MORE TIMES PER DAY, INCLUDING OUTSIDE YOUR HOMEo You take pills (could include vitamins or medications) at 4 or more times during the day, and need to bring them with you wherever you goo You also frequently take pain medications

What you think is what you thinkwhat you think is what you thinkwhat you think is what you thinkif only you could think

Neen is something that a very few people or objects have in common, but still it is so clear and recognizable that even someone who had never heard this word before can easily pin point.Neen is a frame of mind, it talks about a new type of feelings that we have through videogames and computers. But even if Neen grown mostly online, is not “net art”. In old Greek, Neen means “exactly now”: this moment and not a second later so now Neen comes mostly in form of peculiar websites such as fataltotheflesh.com but tomorrow it maybe found in certain characteristics of our genetically engineered bodies.Neen fashion doesn’t really exist yet apart of some clothes that Nicolas Ghesquiere designs for Balenciaga.

It's like drinking Frangelico, you know it's based on some monk's recipe from 1455 and it's all dressed up as the past but really what you're drinking is a bottle from the 80's. Experiencing history unsentimentally is fraught from the get go. There's no need to bring history into disrepute as much in equal measures as to exalt it. Stuck in the middle with you and other lamentable soliloquies. Turner was a fantastic painter, but when I say that it has to be tempered against the present, or else you sit at the bottom of the time trap while all the little furries are running around above in the forest without you. And believe me, they're running! Just ask Pol Pot.

The huge J. M. W. Turner retrospective at the Met is no relaxing summer show. Hot and bothersome, it is a barrage of guileful effects, surveying the artist’s lifelong campaign to surprise and impress—when not shocking and awing—British sensibility. Indisputably masterful, Turner invested little watercolors of quotidian subjects with tonal sparkle, and bombastic battle and disaster canvases with lyrical dash. But unlike John Constable, his quieter, more profound peer, Turner conveys only irritable ambition. We must never forget to admire him. This tires. Turner’s style is synthetic, leaning on picturesque convention (never more so than when most nearly abstract) while brazening arbitrary audacities. He overlays splooshes of paint with passages of tidy drawing like bathtub decals. He did not anticipate Impressionism, which would submerge drawing in painting. William Hazlitt cited a view of his work as “pictures of nothing, and very like.” Actually, it is a congeries of misty, fiery, surfy, sunset stunts—an art less to contemplate than to talk about, calculated to jazz the talkiest of nations. Turner was the Damien Hirst of his day. ♦

Although I sort of forget to read Schjeldahl these days. He's smart but often he's just not paying attention. When he says stuff like Turner is just too tricky, I can't help thinking he just doesn't know that much about technique.

I mean Turner is a great technician, granted, but no more than Van Eyck, Poussin, Titian, Velasquez etc. You've got to have the chops, no question. But that doesn't give you how and where they're used.

Turner didn't invent the storm landscape, the storm seascape (see 17th century Dutch painting) but he did invent a storm that goes all the way to and from the artist's brush, even at its brushiest.

anyway my devil is only the trickster...the good devil. The trickster is here to confound the real devil...

The DOL’s Apparel Industry & Fair Wages Task Force found factory workers worked 12-hour days, often six or seven days a week. Employees were paid on a piece-rate basis and were instructed to fill out two time cards — one for Monday through Wednesday and a second card for theremainder of the week — ensuring that no more than 40 hours of work would show on any card. According to the timecards and the factory's production, workers were completing an entire item of clothing in less than a minute. Investigators even found a question-and-answer sheet meant to coach workers on how to respond to labor investigators without raising suspicions.

I was shocked to read that the U.S. Army is shooting live pigs with M16A2 and M4 rifles at the U.S. Army Garrison at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii. There is no justification for this cruelty. The majority of medical schools in North America no longer use animals for medical training, and more effective humane alternatives are readily available. Please adopt PETA’s recommendations, and take immediate action to end the needless suffering of animals for the U.S. Army’s trauma-management training exercises.

"Turner is positioned by Godard in an astute shuffling of the cards: Peace—Burial at Sea, 1842, coincides with the recitation of Baudelaire’s poem “Le Voyage” (1859). The dark, terminal stasis of the ship, set off against beams of illumination, parallels Baudelaire’s evocation of unprecedented voyages that can be undertaken without movement in space. Falling out of sleep, I hit the floor Put on some rock tee and I'm out with the door From Bowery to Broome to Greene, I'm a walking lizard Last night's dream was a talking baby lizard All comin' from hu-man imagination Day dreaming days in a daydream nation Smashed-up against a car at three A.M. Kids just up for basketball, beat me in my head There's bum trash in my hall and my place is ripped I've totaled another amp, I'm calling in sick It's an anthem in a vacuum on a hyperstation Day dreaming days in a daydream nation

Saw turner's slave ship at the MFA today.Those fishies lower left are weird indeed.They were the same species of fishiesin the last room of the ny turner show(the unfinished pieces). They look likea species Redon might cook up in his mind.

Back to the boston mfa -- didn't carefor the el greco / velazquez show. Toend with still life painting seemed odd.But it did end with velazquez's old womancooking eggs. Should've been on it's ownfree standing wall.

my greatest battle is fighting my own nostalgia. what would happen if I were to submit? maybe tarkovsky had the answer. in any case, three things travel not back, the spoken word, the sped arrow, and time passed. is it sad? probably not. take it easy Turner.

I suppose looking back can be a trap, especially when there’s not much to look forward to. Faced with steady decline and death, for instance, it seems only natural to reflect on the highlights, whether it’s all been worthwhile. Or does the future look so bleak only because the past looks so good? But sometimes things really were better ‘back then’. Sometimes resources are actually finite and dwindling. You can resist nostalgia but that won’t necessarily make the future any brighter, you can deny the future but that won’t necessarily make the past any less rosy.

The sheer weight of the past after a while ought to make judgments more refined, more acute, many perspectives on a given event, or many events from a given perspective. How to tell, which? And is it the same for cultures and nations, movements and groups, as persons? Do 'they' sense the end this way, cling to the past?

I always wondered what the big deal was with Turner. I though it had something to do with a requirement to have another British artist to admire. But after watching Schama talk about him I was convinced that he did a lot for painting. It would be interesting to see how his political environment affected/inspired his work. Personally I believe this nature as emotional force is absent in today's art world. I wonder why that is. Can we blame our workaholic ways or the iPhone?

But who exactly is sensing the end? Is a five year old sensing the end? I don't think so. It's very relative to sense ends and beginnings, tied deeply to your own position in your end or beginning of your life. Doomsaying is as old as the emotional mind, and yet each and every time it yields no result. It might seem like it's ending but it fails to. The endgame is where most professional chess players resign early, after a serious blunder or setback, whereas novice players will refuse to accept the end. In this way the trajectory always ends up in the hands of the apprentice, under direct influence or even denial of the master. And while there is no avant garde, that is only a term. There is always change, and there are always the harbingers of that change. Yes there is absence of the emotional gravitas that appears present in the works of Turner for example, in painting today. But I resist aligning myself to either the past or the future of the medium, as they are abstract linear notions, when there is only ever truly a present, a comlex present that contains all three aspects of time at any given moment in relative factions to a very personal and subjective worldview. Nature repeats itself blindly but at the same time is mutating the design so so slightly. To understand that is a kind of quantum parallel. This presence is always influenced greatly by it's forebears, but at the same time it wants to break like Oedipus, only to end up realizing that breaking was just a passage or a veil that when lifted reveals the tragedy of knowing the truth. The truth is when you walk forwards, you are actually walking backwards. Spiritual negotiation begins at that point. The Stoics had some nice practical ways of tackling it. But in tragedy there is a sublime beauty and pathos, something which most people are unwilling to confront today, in the pursuit of a 'good life'. A good life that is light and easy, reduced salt, fat, sugar. Focus on health, mental asides. Essentially culture is undergoing a flattening effect, where the cruel laws of the jungle are being quashed by a bevy of equal socialistic moral imperatives, disguising the nature of the beast which hasn't changed much at all. I hate to generalize, but it does appear that on the whole developed society is more or less happier, more complacent, flatter, even numb, than ever previously before, given that there have been no real major collective uprisings for some time. Everyone being too tired for a revoltion, or too wise, or too entertained. The flatness of acceptance leads to a lighter form of art production in some ways, but that's not bad. It's not good either. To really make good history painting, one has to suffer a lot. I'm sure that's the case, a few still do. We don't see their work because it wouldn't sell, art has become an industry, and there are more artists than ever before. It's harder to suffer these days when it seems everybody has some strange hindsight of where it will lead them and a contradictory viewpoint unwitting of itself, so focused on self-achievement rather than collective achievement. If you look at most of the work on the PNYC page at present, the majority can be read as expressing some form of lament, except Nozkowski, and he is painting currently, and his work is fantastic, the sentiment in it being very difficult to overtly lean to any particular point in the emotional gamut. It's my favourite work on the page. Turner is Turner, impossible to forget, and largely operating presently as the Prize, the accolade of achievement. Rightly so. But, there's just so much more going on. He has his place now in the annals of history, everybody knows. The technique is stunning, I have stood before one for a long time. How things have changed. We needed Turner, but if he were here now his ipone would be ringing and his dealer would be talking. He would paint differently. But speculation is for brokers. I'm happy to accept the past but always wary of letting it draw me in and manipulate the scales. Weight and measure is a fools comparative when it comes to the ongoing presence of art, as much as it is all we have got. I like to resist pure definition. All the notes are not the chord, and other german ideals.

Before the idea of painting, there was still the act of painting. It is an essential process and I check up on how it is faring, so do you. But really, the death cry is just marketing. Maybe I said it before but painting does not die unless humanity does. It's intrinsic to the Nth degree. To me it's like saying, The Death Of Language, in the future we will not Communicate! Bshit.

Actually I think the closest equivalent to Turner these days is Kiefer.

And yeah, people need pictures, and pictures need painting for reasons too complex to go into here.

All the same, nothing lasts for ever. People die, others are born, never quite the same. Empires decline and fall. Cultures and nations lapse or alter beyond recognition. Entropy, decay, corruption - sooner or later we sense them close to home. We grow up is all it takes. There is only so much oil in the earth… trees… drinking water... The more we exploit the more uncertain the atmosphere becomes. The planet can support only so many humans at any one time. Competition for favour is rigged and the greater the rigging and re-rigging, the more rickety the whole picture, never mind painting, becomes.

It’s interesting to see the current PNYC page as a lament – in Nozkowski’s case – denial. It grinds on. The past is to be lived up to or down, but there is no doing without it.

Nozkowski's work is not in denial Cap. It's just that not every painting need be about the trauma and scare-mongering pedalled onto us by the present media machine, or in the past the revered scriptures. There is still beauty. There will have to be a resource shift, politically drenched and slow, shortages appear but it's not the first time, and even so it will still take an extremely long time to run it's course. I'm betting that it's very manageable. These overarching pains are not exclusively the subject of the reflection art offers. It's also not where the most powerful statements in art resonate, though it can be. All encompassing statements of the human condition are important, but no more than small and sundry ones, because in the end they are all statements of the human condition whether or not they are overtly implying this. I like it better when it doesn't try so hard to publish that ideal. In the end we need the spectrum of both forms, and more. I like to believe that we have a will to survive, and will, at the mercy of universe. A key part of getting to that point is being able to see the flickering pilot that stays on inside many hearts, artists are often good for society in that way and play a key part in reminding us of that with their work, well, at least some do. Not all should. Greatness appears greater when ossified, the mystery is so enchanting.

I like the reference to Keifer, personally I prefer the less fantastic nature of Keifer to Turner. Both vital painters. Keifer's recent cosmos work is absolutely incredible. Though he even says himself he has no idea why he's here and so tends to latch onto things that seem real, like flowers. I understand but I also like the brave who can transcend recognizable reality, are unafraid to not represent anything directly, speaking in a more primal feature set. One way we were able to fabricate most of the world around us today was by melting stuff. In the alchemy of this process one thing is for a time not what it was until it becomes something else. But there is much in the transition.

What's being talked about here?Change We Can Believe In?Culture is a broad term.

I like chess, especially endgames.I like the iphone. especially because it's agame changer. I like systems-on-chips and fpga's and parallelism in algorithmicsynthesis because they change the culturewho play games. They also change human life. I like painting because you don't need electricityor war to turn anything on to play.

But as beautiful and vital as painting can be,I think it's important to define which culturefind's it vital and what role 'change' playsin the culture, and what role that cultureplays in the enclosing culture. Otherwise,the words 'culture' and 'vitality' and 'change'and 'cosmos' seem empty and flat to me.

There was a time in our history when painters or paintingshad an actual role to play in the trajectory of ideologicalspiritual, technological and cultural hegemonies/soverenties.That time has.. uhhem.... passed.

Ours is a glass bead game. And Change is just a canon:A rule for a game that keepsthings exciting.

Indeed, in chess, it'd be no funif the king could move more thanone square at a time. He's a formalistafter all, even at the time of impendingdeath.

peg you might be projecting a value onto history that wasn't there until we decided it was, recently.

ends and beginnings are dissolved in that fluid, the fluid that carries all of these binary or factioned templates we apply to reality. In essence there are no divisions until language creates them.

One way would be to see games ending and beginning, another to sense a total game but only ever be able to see a part of it, and another to see no game at all. The role of painting alters from the various vantage points. It depends on who and when it is being read.

All the global anxiety around and media panic and even apocalyptic musical views like Becks new album - it all points to the beginning of the 21st century. It's so similar to the early 1900's that it's kinda funny. And we even have remodernism, which has something valuable within it. I mean really, in the universe, on earth, it is not the year 2008, especially not in china - but by living by these ;cultural; applications, we give ourselves a momentum and a rhythm to align the pulse to. I just smile coz I think it's funny. I see right through it, but I don't feel cold or left out by the transparency. Nature brought us into the void, and how we love to fill it! Sittin' round the campfire with qwerty.

... but webthing, tonight my associationof painting with history (disclaimer: theassociation prob won't be there tomorrow)was in thinking of the Hapsburgs or theHague or Henry's court placed value onpainting as representations or even ambassadors of power. Historical in thesecases, not subjective musings of the roleof painting in hegemony. I don't think I need totouch on painting's role as spiritual instruments...

All cultural production is tied to it's relationship time and the world.As such, painting is a mere curio.I think it's architecture's time to sing.

Oh no i didn't call it that, Billy did back in 2000. But only recently has it started to get a grip, tied up in stuff like New Sincerity movements n all that jazz. I just can't understand why people keep saying, it's alive, it's dead, it's back, it's gone - it makes me laugh like, fuck, Wanted: Dead or Alive. Waves are produced by the ocean but still the ocean remains, sometimes without the waves, we love to focus on the waves!

I often get the sense we're all sitting around a boiling cauldron, peering in, and shouting out the names of the bubbles as they surface and resurface - but unknowing of this, most of the time we're acting like we're walking across a tightrope, or down the plank... as if there is some kind of finality just up ahead. Sorry to say, nope.

To break it down, scientific time permits me to say that there are 365 days in a year, but there is no place to decide the start or the end of that cycle, other than in various cultural templates. we are often fooled by our mortality.

peg if you won't think it tomorrow there's no need to now? painting isn't a curio, unless you want it to be. to me it's close to the origin of all communication, it's not a substance, it's not pigment, it's not paint, it's meaning has gone way beyond that into an act with a surface. i would laugh if many thousands of years were to suddenly vanish. architecture can be monumental and even speak broadly about its times now and then, but still it has one vital thing in it's way that blocks it from ever coming close the resonance of painting - function.

Magister Ludi man, that shit is so art school, all that remodernism and shit, man that shit, that, fuck man, that's just not really dealing with my problems man, that's like totally abstract and shit. Like for academic wankers if you ask me.

I'm all for like, getting to the root of the problem, and seeing the bigger picture - that's pretty good shit, being all zen or whatever, dropping into the blue room, or being above it all, like hitchcock in the birds, just a force of nature, but brah, I'm like stoked to just sort of chill in the hood and not deal with all those uptight motherfuckers in their bubblicious art world fuck that noise you know?

And then I get the sense that so would they, too, like to get the fuck out. And I'm totally down with that - but it takes consensus - you can change.

But then there are people who say no JWM Turner is an absolute watershed benchmarket moment, you ignore him at your peril, the whole house comes down, or at least you miss out on something beautifull, like a marketing anle or claim to authority, and I'm like, ok, yeah, but you miss out on the sun if you go inside, you miss out on QUERTY if you leave the hive but do you miss your mind if you lose your life?

No, and that's why we will contiunue to corrupt the young - life is too precious not too.

Like when the Dadaists had no profit model - or governemnt funding - would they have done better with government funding? It's debatable, but I know their QWERTY wasn't better than say, Queequegs's qwerty. Or mine, actually, now that I think of it.

The dada people had trust funds and patrons - so I wonder also if they wouldn't have made better work if they had been living in the gutter. Probably not. Most of the most revered poets died young anyways. Its like whats this myth of the artist anyways?

oh yeah we all die in the end, right? I think thats clue numero uno I don;t have to care too much what the moderators of the pool hall have to say about deep pockets and public figures - like that means anything on the microeconomic scale most peopel live on anyways. So what if you aren;t in the history books? There are plenty of syphalytic aparatchiks who are. Thats good company!

"are you saying that 'time' (some version of) and 'the world' (some version of) are not cultural productions? If they are not, then why not art"

hmmm... Cap I never said that time and the worldare not cultural productions. And as much as Ilove paintng, I don't see it as an essential part ofhuman activity. I do see painting as being essentialto painting culture -- which is very specific.

When you piss on the urinal wall and suddenly decide to start coloring in a patch of the aluminum or make a shape - that's a part of painting. When you talk on the phone and doodle some crazy thing and then hang up and see it sitting there still looking back at you - painting. Or painting is like when you elevate those things to the strecther. It's like jarring pickles. Some people say drawing but whatever. Drawing the start of painting. Pretty much any visual still, built through hand movement on a surface - yep. This isn't painting on the wall in the gallery, but it's where it begins in life that is most of what painting is. Massive human process of reflection action, that thing on the wall is just the record of the act. It's essential and everywhere, though only painting culture keeps the act up to keep walling it/buying/collecting/copying/ripping/gesticulating/preserving/analyzing/measuring/laughing/crying on it.

i know remodernism is too conceited, but like it has anti-academic sentiments in it anywayz.

The Remodernism ManifestoThis Website is Best Viewed Using Firefox

Remodernism

'towards a new spirituality in art'

A Stuckist Document: The first Remodernist art group (est. 1999)

Through the course of the 20th century Modernism has progressively lost its way, until finally toppling into the pit of Postmodern balderdash. At this appropriate time, The Stuckists, the first Remodernist Art Group, announce the birth of Remodernism.

1. Remodernism takes the original principles of Modernism and reapplies them, highlighting vision as opposed to formalism.2. Remodernism is inclusive rather than exclusive and welcomes artists who endeavour to know themselves and find themselves through art processes that strive to connect and include, rather than alienate and exclude. Remodernism upholds the spiritual vision of the founding fathers of Modernism and respects their bravery and integrity in facing and depicting the travails of the human soul through a new art that was no longer subservient to a religious or political dogma and which sought to give voice to the gamut of the human psyche.

3. Remodernism discards and replaces Post-Modernism because of its failure to answer or address any important issues of being a human being.4. Remodernism embodies spiritual depth and meaning and brings to an end an age of scientific materialism, nihilism and spiritual bankruptcy.

5. We don't need more dull, boring, brainless destruction of convention, what we need is not new, but perennial. We need an art that integrates body and soul and recognises enduring and underlying principles which have sustained wisdom and insight throughout humanity's history. This is the proper function of tradition.

6. Modernism has never fulfilled its potential. It is futile to be 'post' something which has not even 'been' properly something in the first place. Remodernism is the rebirth of spiritual art.

7. Spirituality is the journey of the soul on earth. Its first principle is a declaration of intent to face the truth. Truth is what it is, regardless of what we want it to be. Being a spiritual artist means addressing unflinchingly our projections, good and bad, the attractive and the grotesque, our strengths as well as our delusions, in order to know ourselves and thereby our true relationship with others and our connection to the divine.

8. Spiritual art is not about fairyland. It is about taking hold of the rough texture of life. It is about addressing the shadow and making friends with wild dogs. Spirituality is the awareness that everything in life is for a higher purpose.

9. Spiritual art is not religion. Spirituality is humanity's quest to understand itself and finds its symbology through the clarity and integrity of its artists.

10. The making of true art is man's desire to communicate with himself, his fellows and his God. Art that fails to address these issues is not art.

11. It should be noted that technique is dictated by, and only necessary to the extent to which it is commensurate with, the vision of the artist.

12. The Remodernist's job is to bring God back into art but not as God was before. Remodernism is not a religion, but we uphold that it is essential to regain enthusiasm (from the Greek, en theos to be possessed by God).

13. A true art is the visible manifestation, evidence and facilitator of the soul's journey. Spiritual art does not mean the painting of Madonnas or Buddhas. Spiritual art is the painting of things that touch the soul of the artist. Spiritual art does not often look very spiritual, it looks like everything else because spirituality includes everything.

14. Why do we need a new spirituality in art? Because connecting in a meaningful way is what makes people happy. Being understood and understanding each other makes life enjoyable and worth living.

Summary

It is quite clear to anyone of an uncluttered mental disposition that what is now put forward, quite seriously, as art by the ruling elite, is proof that a seemingly rational development of a body of ideas has gone seriously awry. The principles on which Modernism was based are sound, but the conclusions that have now been reached from it are preposterous.

We address this lack of meaning, so that a coherent art can be achieved and this imbalance redressed.

Let there be no doubt, there will be a spiritual renaissance in art because there is nowhere else for art to go. Stuckism's mandate is to initiate that spiritual renaissance now.

you can concern yourself with history and be endlessly playing the endgame loop-like cap with whos more like turned keifer or rothko. zzz. or you can go with the self-help like becks scientology. (my darling friend was a crank head but she finally got off the stuff by going to NA, and they want you to aplolgize to people you wronged, but i said bayby dont apologize to me. did you think i didnt know you were lying?)but the one thing that was said that i like is "an act with a surface". isn't that what jeff koons was talking about?anyway, its all about what you share. like with my friend. we shared bigtime, and it lasts forever. the love i mean. if you can get that act onto a surface you're all the way home.

Im gonna go see the xfiles movie. this one up and coming looks good too:

Ricky plays Mark Billison - a very unsuccessful screenwriter in his forties with average looks, moderate intelligence and little hope for the future. He's basically a nice chap, but a bit of a loser.

In a world without fiction, film entertainment consists of unembellished readings of historical facts, and since Mark is saddled with writing about a particulary uneventful period of history he finds himself in the doldrums career-wise.

However, Mark is about to make a momentous discovery - the intentionally false statement.

hired guns man, or seven samurai. THey got your back to the future right here, like a Cuisinart attached to a Delorean. The Stuckists need to let it go, like Zen adn shit, breathe in, breathe in the air. Warm yourself beside the fire and listen to the giant tolling bell. Like if you think of the sta puft marshmallow man, that's what will come to destroy you - so true, and in the same way, if you think about sharks they will come to your funeral - it is your funeral, even if you can't see it because it takes your entire life to see it, it's so big. You can gold plate it, but that wont make it better - like you can't even ski in Iran anymore because they just don't care about art theory on the main. But is it art? Are you in or out? I personally think I'm in, but that's hubris, and obviously I know less about art history than your average believer, but I don't believe so much as perceive, and I think that's better than chewing on lies your whole life or trivia - which is like reading about roller coasters in order to better appreciate gravity. You can't really get there - its more like reading a travelogue or theory - if you never apply it what are you? A professor or something - but not like hogworts where you are a practicing practitioner, besides that stuff is a rehash of older better stories without the anachronisms - stuff needs no update so I guess I'm sort of a conservative but not a reactionary, nor a stuckist though I do sympathize with the struggle. Why would you join a group anyways? Strength in numbers? Seems like the whole let a thousand flowers bloom - that's a lot of dandelions - I've evolved shorter if you know what I mean. I want to believe the truth is out there right? Fuck that variable, its in here, like Chairman Mao would say - and then tell farmers to be politicians as if they were more pure - that's what class issues will do to you. Mao never was a real boy.

YGirlfriend in a coma, I knowI know - its seriousMy, my, my, my, my, my baby, goodbye. This has often signalled [sic] a backward crouch preceding a forward leap. I think of Picasso’s world-weary blue period, T. S. Eliot’s “Gerontion” and “Prufrock,” and the budding Abstract Expressionists’ wallows in Jungian mythology. The syndrome announces the exhaustion of a received cultural situation, whose traditions are slack and whose future is opaque. It typically entails nostalgia for real or fancied past ages that dealt—successfully, in retrospect—with similar crises.

I was challenged on two posts I had made here regarding a lecture on color by Graydon Parrish that I attended. In an excess of enthusiasm, I had shared my lecture notes on this blog, even though attendees were asked to be discreet. I was asked in no uncertain terms to take the posts down, which I did immediately because it was Graydon’s stuff and he did not want it out there. I received considerable criticism on the Cennini Forum for having posted in the first place, which I accepted because I was wrong to have done so without asking permission first. I would describe the experience as an excellent character-building exercise, but no fun at all.

Totally off-topic question but need artistic advice and the saatchi orgy site is too retarded for me. A friend of my cousin's wants to buy 3 of my oil paintings. I've never been represented by a gallery or anything like that. I had one student group show years ago at SVA and graduated with Honors. Blah Blah. So how much should I charge for averaged-labored paintings all 12 inches square. One of them took weeks to create. The buyer is a Columbia student but her folks have ok money. She's a great network friend and has even offered to manage/promote my career. I'm a painter not a business man but I don't want to give them away either. What would you do?Thanks